And thus, this blog.
This may shock you, very few scholarly journal articles are about orienteering. I think, though, with a little creativity, we can all learn something from these poorly compensated phD students' hard work. So, let's give it a shot, and see how it goes!
Oh, also, proof-reading is not really my style. Just so you know.
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"Effects of anxiety on running with and without an aiming task" by Nicky Nibbeling, Hein A. M. Daanen, Rens M. Gerritsma, Rianne M. Hofland & Raôul R. D. Oudejans, Journal of Sports Sciences, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2012 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2011.617386
Ever tried to do any physical activity on the edge of a cliff? Find your heart rate to be just a tad elevated? What else did you notice? This study of anxiety while running looked at variety of different physiological parameters while in a low and a high anxiety condition. In this case, the high anxiety was created by having participants run a treadmill elevated 4.2 metres off the ground, with no guard rails.
Oh yeah, also, they were throwing darts.
Obviously, it was found that most of the parameters measured adjusted in a negative way, performance wise, during the high anxiety state. These included: "Rating Scale of Perceived Mental Effort", Oxygen update, heart rate, stride frequency, stride length and contact time (time between heel contact and toe-off). Their body worked a little harder, and they took more, shorter steps, with increased contact time. In short, they became less efficient runners. The dart throwing? Naturally, as the anxiety rose, the became less accurate with the darts. Big shocker there, but relevant to the overall discussion, I think.
In addition, they also surveyed the participants on statements of attentional focus during running in both the conditions. In the high anxiety statement, they tended to focus more on movement execution, 'worries and distracting thoughts', and less on task-relevant & irrelevant external stimuli, and positive monitoring.
What can orienteers learn from this?
Actually, lots of things come to mind, and they're all somewhat interrelated.
Firstly, I think we can clearly conclude that confidence in one's forest running is very important. The authors note "anxiety may have pushed runners out of their preferred mode into less efficient running. In this process, movements may have become more rigid". When you're bombing down a hill in the rain, what is going through your mind? "Man I really don't want to crack open my skull"? Or, "Just stay loose and roll through the terrain". I think in our sport's case, not only will carrying a lot of anxiety slow you down, you're more likely to hurt yourself, since you're not ready to adapt to the terrain. It'll make you tired faster (due to lowered efficiency), and will probably make you MORE susceptible to injury. It sounds like a slippery slope to me. The authors say it best, that "the changes we found in running economy were related to the changes in attention, from the task-relevant external matters to threat-related internal worries."
Second, though dart-throwing is not the same type of intellectual task of navigation, I can see similarities in the precision nature of the task to something like... a compass bearing! The authors conclude their paper by saying that "when tasks that rely on the aerobic system and aiming tasks are combined an accumulated effect occurs, implying that running, aiming, and anxiety all compete for attention." I wonder, would there also be reduced accuracy if you were trying to run on a bearing, and doing nothing but worrying about whether you were still on that bearing? If, at some point, all you can do is go on a bearing, is it better to perpetually make small adjustments to your bearing, or stick closer to your original bearing, while picking out occasional features (the task-relevant external matter) to confirm your direction? Could excessive directional worying fatigue you faster?
Third, one thing I thought was interesting, was that external task-irrelevant focus actually went down with higher anxiety. The irrelevant stimuli included things like "noises in the background". I suppose I could take this to suggest that are certain amount of anxiety is useful. Let's called it "vigilance". I've always found that one of most common times I make a mistake is when I think "This is going really well!" A certain amount of anxiety, at least in orienteering, means that you never are letting yourself change your attention to something unimportant, because that's when we can easily miss something really important!
Take home message (the useful part if you didn't feel like reading the whole thing)
Clearly anxiety impacts a person's running ability and task ability. Running is not as automatic as we might think, and you will make yourself slower by being anxious about things.
In the future, perhaps our training should not just include improving the good things, but having means of dealing with the bad. What causes your anxiety? What can you do about it?
Me, I could be a better descender, lighter on my feet. So doing some overspeed training, working on my leg stability, and just blasting some downhill should raise my confidence and reduce the fear of smashing my face. And I like my face. It has some of my most.... functional... features.
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"Effects of anxiety on running with and without an aiming task" by Nicky Nibbeling, Hein A. M. Daanen, Rens M. Gerritsma, Rianne M. Hofland & Raôul R. D. Oudejans, Journal of Sports Sciences, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2012 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640414.2011.617386
Ever tried to do any physical activity on the edge of a cliff? Find your heart rate to be just a tad elevated? What else did you notice? This study of anxiety while running looked at variety of different physiological parameters while in a low and a high anxiety condition. In this case, the high anxiety was created by having participants run a treadmill elevated 4.2 metres off the ground, with no guard rails.
Oh yeah, also, they were throwing darts.
Obviously, it was found that most of the parameters measured adjusted in a negative way, performance wise, during the high anxiety state. These included: "Rating Scale of Perceived Mental Effort", Oxygen update, heart rate, stride frequency, stride length and contact time (time between heel contact and toe-off). Their body worked a little harder, and they took more, shorter steps, with increased contact time. In short, they became less efficient runners. The dart throwing? Naturally, as the anxiety rose, the became less accurate with the darts. Big shocker there, but relevant to the overall discussion, I think.
In addition, they also surveyed the participants on statements of attentional focus during running in both the conditions. In the high anxiety statement, they tended to focus more on movement execution, 'worries and distracting thoughts', and less on task-relevant & irrelevant external stimuli, and positive monitoring.
What sort of anxiety is being experienced here? (photo by Adrian Zissos)
What can orienteers learn from this?
Actually, lots of things come to mind, and they're all somewhat interrelated.
Firstly, I think we can clearly conclude that confidence in one's forest running is very important. The authors note "anxiety may have pushed runners out of their preferred mode into less efficient running. In this process, movements may have become more rigid". When you're bombing down a hill in the rain, what is going through your mind? "Man I really don't want to crack open my skull"? Or, "Just stay loose and roll through the terrain". I think in our sport's case, not only will carrying a lot of anxiety slow you down, you're more likely to hurt yourself, since you're not ready to adapt to the terrain. It'll make you tired faster (due to lowered efficiency), and will probably make you MORE susceptible to injury. It sounds like a slippery slope to me. The authors say it best, that "the changes we found in running economy were related to the changes in attention, from the task-relevant external matters to threat-related internal worries."
Second, though dart-throwing is not the same type of intellectual task of navigation, I can see similarities in the precision nature of the task to something like... a compass bearing! The authors conclude their paper by saying that "when tasks that rely on the aerobic system and aiming tasks are combined an accumulated effect occurs, implying that running, aiming, and anxiety all compete for attention." I wonder, would there also be reduced accuracy if you were trying to run on a bearing, and doing nothing but worrying about whether you were still on that bearing? If, at some point, all you can do is go on a bearing, is it better to perpetually make small adjustments to your bearing, or stick closer to your original bearing, while picking out occasional features (the task-relevant external matter) to confirm your direction? Could excessive directional worying fatigue you faster?
Third, one thing I thought was interesting, was that external task-irrelevant focus actually went down with higher anxiety. The irrelevant stimuli included things like "noises in the background". I suppose I could take this to suggest that are certain amount of anxiety is useful. Let's called it "vigilance". I've always found that one of most common times I make a mistake is when I think "This is going really well!" A certain amount of anxiety, at least in orienteering, means that you never are letting yourself change your attention to something unimportant, because that's when we can easily miss something really important!
Take home message (the useful part if you didn't feel like reading the whole thing)
Clearly anxiety impacts a person's running ability and task ability. Running is not as automatic as we might think, and you will make yourself slower by being anxious about things.
In the future, perhaps our training should not just include improving the good things, but having means of dealing with the bad. What causes your anxiety? What can you do about it?
Me, I could be a better descender, lighter on my feet. So doing some overspeed training, working on my leg stability, and just blasting some downhill should raise my confidence and reduce the fear of smashing my face. And I like my face. It has some of my most.... functional... features.
Can you relate to this in some way? Do you notice a decrease in running economy when anxious about your navigation?
perhaps our training should not just include improving the good things
ReplyDeleteI thought training was also a lot about improving the bad things ;)
Answering your question - I can certainly relate to the anxiety thing when running downhill with my bad knee. My feeling is sometimes that it doesn´t really help going slower, but I´m still not daring enough to go at closer to full speed.
...and of course this affects my navigation in "shitty" terrain where I have to pay more attention to where I put my feet than on reading the map.